Carrot Cake

I baked a carrot cake today and it turned out excellent! Despite how obvious it is, I never knew carrot cake had actual carrots in it.

Ingredients

1 cup (100 grams) pecans or walnuts

3/4 pound (340 grams) raw carrots (about 2 1/2 cups finely grated)

2 cups (260 grams) all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

4 large eggs

1 1/2 cups (300 grams) granulated white sugar

1 cup (240 ml) safflower, vegetable or canola oil (or other flavorless oil)

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Cream Cheese Frosting:

1/4 cup (57 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature

8 ounces (227 grams) cream cheese, room temperature

2 cups (230 grams) confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon (4 grams) pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (outer yellow skin)

Carrot Cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place rack in center of oven. Butter or spray two - 9 x 2 inch (23 x 5 cm) cake pans and line the bottoms of the pans with a circle of parchment paper. 

Toast the pecans or walnuts for about 8 minutes or until lightly browned and fragrant. Let cool and then chop coarsely.

Peel and finely grate the carrots. Set aside.

In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and ground cinnamon. Set aside.

In bowl of electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the eggs until frothy (about 1 minute). Gradually add the sugar and beat until the batter is thick and light colored (about 3 - 4 minutes). Add the oil in a steady stream and then beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and beat just until incorporated. With a large rubber spatula fold in the grated carrots and chopped nuts. Evenly divide the batter between the two prepared pans and bake 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  

Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. After about 5 -10 minutes invert the cakes onto the wire rack, remove the pans and parchment paper, and then cool completely before frosting. 

To assemble: place one cake layer, top side down, onto your serving plate. Spread with about one third of the frosting. Gently place the other cake, top of cake facing down, onto the frosting, and spread the rest of the frosting over the top and sides of the cake. If desired, press toasted and finely chopped nuts on the sides of the cake and decorate the top of the cake with marzipan carrots (see below). Cover and refrigerate any leftovers.

Serves 10 - 12.

Cream Cheese Frosting: In bowl of electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the cream cheese and butter, on low speed, just until blended with no lumps. Gradually add the sifted powdered sugar and beat, on low speed, until fully incorporated and smooth.  Beat in the vanilla extract, and lemon zest.

The pictures aren't as nice as I hoped they could be but they'll do :)

Hi.

Dear blog,

I've neglected you for too long, constantly checking up on you having a million things to say but in the end half-heartedly deciding on leaving my comeback post blank yet again, preventing myself from giving you the updates you so clearly were created for.

Here I am everyone. Finally manning up to actually sit myself down to type out a mid-holiday post after 3 sloth-like months. It would take too much brainpower to recap on everything that happened these past laid-back months and not to mention another forever typing it all out to my impeccable standards. I tend to go over my words over and over if it isn't to my liking. I'm sure most of my readers have slowly died out to the point of extinction. I don't even know if there are some hopeful ones who check in every once in a while hoping I would have at the least done something! Either way, I'll continue.

Last Sunday, there was a very delayed neighborhood Deepavali get-together at the park and Danial was there. Had one of those clique chats by the swing catching up on the what-nots. He told me he's going to UK to study next year but when he asked me what I've been doing during the holidays, all I could think of was "nothing." I've been such a lifeless nooby these past weeks ever since all my lady friends went overseas ie. UK, Singapore & Spain for the holidays whereas I'm stuck here doing (as my mom likes to call it) counting my fingers and toes.

It's not like I've completely dropped off the face of the cyber universe. I go on Facebook, I still tweet, I google (a little too much). It's just that all these don't require the commitment a blog needs. I'm young, give me a break.

On top of that, I've been channeling my inner-art-child by making lots and lots of perler bead projects. Latest one is of a baby seal. I just copied the shape of a whale on the internet and used white instead of baby blue.

I'm wearing nail polish by the way. That can't possibly be my natural nail colour. I wish.

I got hit in the head with a volleyball

Photo taken with Amanda's DSLR last Friday after everyone snuck out of Art class a few minutes before the bell rang. I was tagged on Facebook so where better to showcase this than here? This was of course before Jie Yao's second drastic haircut.

Speaking of classmates, the boys and I filled latex gloves with water in the Science lab. They looked like condoms. Just saying. Whole bunch of us were laughing at the back of the class cause the fingers kept expanding and contracting which resembled...you know. Dirty minds think alike.

PS: Olney's coming to visit tomorrow after school! Get your cameras ready.

PPS: I say get your cameras ready cause at WorldStage there was this girl trying to get a picture of his back thinking no one would notice. We noticed. You see, tall white guys + little asian girls always mix well.

Just The Way You Are; Bruno Mars

I don't like homework. Especially if they involve Sejarah or BM. I just had to finish a set each of Sejarah & BM papers with a total of 140 questions. I can't wait to get PMR over with and start O-Levels next year. At least their History lesson is in English and it's not about some Malay guy fighting for the rite to collect taxes on a river. I'm not even sure if I'm going to take History next year or of what else I'm taking or what I want to be. Of course I've drifted from one cita-cita to the next but I'm not grounded on what I want my career to be or what line of work I want to be involved with. I did want to be a nurse (back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth) but I found out that you have to sponge-bath old people and deal with blood so that dream was flushed down the drain along with the other poo-ey ideas. When I went for the Japan exchange program in Form 1 (2008), Misaki (my host) took me to the aquarium which had this awesome dolphin show. For a split second I thought of becoming a dolphin trainer but the thought of smelling like fish everyday wasn't very pleasing. I do know what I don't want to be though. I don't want to be a doctor (anything that requires me to slice someone open actually), an engineer, a lawyer, a ballerina (as if I'm capable) or a business manager.

PS: You're amazing just the way you are

& when you smile the whole world stops and stares for a while

PPS: Shutup I'm not in love. I just really like the song :)

Zombie Bombs

I've been all over the place today. From shopping in Times Square getting a scoop-neck white lace crop-top (even saying that gets me giggly. I'll just leave it to your imagination to how it looks like) to visiting my grandma all the way in Kepong to borrow my uncle's stick-shift Proton for Nick to practice his driving, having the best pineapple tart in my life at O'Pappa on the way to visit my other grandma, eating at Elfresco for the second night in a row in Empire, laughing obnoxiously in the Korean food aisle about zombie bombs (which are surprisingly un-Plants vs. Zombies-related), stocking up on more microwave popcorn, imitating that Chef At Home guy's over-enthusiastic accent with my brother and falling in love with puddles of poodles the size of my serving of aglio olio pasta to buying a dozen bottles of wine at Denise for 70% off just cause we can.

That's right. I know how to sum up my entire day in a single sentence/paragraph without over-doing the details.

Japanese boys

As usual when any foreign, decent-looking guy comes along, almost all the girls swarm (including me) throwing their hormones at him. They put a fist-full of estrogen into tiny drawstring biodegradable bags and throw it at him hoping he'll notice their names written in size42 block letters with a black Sharpie permanent marker. Most of the time, he won't notice cause he's too busy befriending the guys but it's worth a shot. I say this because there was a cute Japanese boy (you know which one I'm talking about) that came to visit today for the Student Exchange Program between Sri Kuala Lumpur and Fukuoka Okazaki Junior High School.

This is all I brought to school today. No bag. No books. It was odd walking into school without anything over my shoulders. We were in the auditorium till 10-ish and the rest of the day was filled of iPods/iPhones under tables in class and getting the boys to buy bubble tea for us cause we females melt in the rain.

 My tie-dye from art class. Got it back today from Pn. Ida. So proud :D

PS: Saya suka lelaki bertubuh sasa - Jaryn Lim.

You make me

In the mood for some bubble milk tea right now. I could just walk out and get some from Take Away but I won't cause I'm the type of person that doesn't like walking out just to get one thing. I don't think I would even go out to get toilet rolls if I urgently needed it or something. That's what brothers are for. 

Did you know I live literally two minutes away from school? I walk. I wake up at 7am every weekday morning (most people I know have to get up at 6? I'm counting my blessings) give or take a few minutes. My mom is my walking alarm clock, you see. I never set my alarm clocks (even though I have 3 in my room, all discarded of their AA batteries) cause most of the time I either forget to switch it on the night before, leading to doom or I don't hear it chirping quietly on the floor where it almost always ends up so after time, I've decided to give up on them entirely.

If you noticed the yummy-nomnomnom smell of food constantly radiating from the cooking room lately, the form3 girls have been baking for the past 2 weeks. Today, it was kek permaisuri with chocolate chips. Everything was going smoothly until the power was cut just as the other girls were about to finish. Good thing Chrystal, Jaryn & I had finished ours way before the rest so we didn't have to go through that. We did however get caught stealing raisins when we thought Pn. Lim wasn't looking.

PS: The Japanese are taking over SriKL tomorrow. I get to miss the entire day of class in the auditorium watching Japanese people bow incessantly.

PPS: Deep in thought about some things tonight.